Oklahoma earthquakes!

[Bird]

I was in bed asleep, but my wife says she was sitting on the sofa watching TV and thought she felt a little movement in the sofa, then decided it must have been her imagination.

 

[greasemonkeyok]

We felt the one last night since we are about 50 miles from the epicenter. It seemed to last for a long time. Visions of the chimney crashing down on the den caused us mild concern. But, nothing bad happened so far as we know.

 

[Bob Ha]

Grew up in Chandler/Sparks and still have some friends that live there. Never had a earthquake all the time I lived there and don't remember anyone talking about it. That was thirty years ago so maybe things have changed.

 

[Alan L.]

We felt it here in north Texas for sure. Lasted maybe 15 seconds and now I have a couple cracks in my brick that I didn't have before.

 

[OKnewguy]

I am about 50 miles from the one we had sat morning (i think a 4.2) and it woke us up, but the one last night, we were watching a movie and it was pretty wild(5.6 and about 40 miles away). No damage, it lasted a long time, and had some real shaking, not just a low rumble, like ones in the past. Here on the local news, they have all of these shots of damage, but most of it is cracks in brick and walls that look like they already had issues, you know old caulking and previous mortar repair.
No big deal really, but a helpless feeling non the less.
Dave

 

[Western]

We felt it here in north Texas for sure. Lasted maybe 15 seconds and now I have a couple cracks in my brick that I didn't have before.

Same here!, I slept through it, but my wife and daughter woke up because of it. They thought it was some kind of explosion.

 

[jinman]

I don't think we would ever have realized something was happening if it had not been the rattling of the pulls on my wife's dresser. They fold down against a metal backing plate and they were just rattling like crazy. I woke and asked my wife if she was getting something out of the dresser, but she said no. After a couple of seconds, she said she thought it was an earthquake and I knew instantly she was right because we've never felt the shuddering like that before. Considering how far we are from the epicenter in OK, I would not have wanted to be a lot nearer.

It's just a thought and I don't know if it has any credibility, but I'm thinking that water wells could silt in, crack a casing, or water tables be shifted slightly in depth due to underground settling. I also wonder what effects these quakes might have on producing gas/oil wells and injection wells. I'm not saying that drilling is responsible, but it certainly might be effected by a strong quake.

 

[Redneck_Randy]

We felt it all the way up here in Osage county being 70+ miles from the epicenter.

 

[dmccarty]

From these graphs Earthquake Facts and Statistics Graphs it would appear that earthquake activity has been increasing...but there might be underlying reasons like better or more detectors that are skewing this data.

I quickly read a report on the quakes over the weekend. There has been an increase in quakes in the OK area. They have increased in numbers and intensity. The USGS has put in more detectors over the years because of the increased activity. Seem like this has been over the last couple of decades but I just quickly scanned the story. Sounded to me that the fault line(s) where just getting more and more active "naturally."

Later,
Dan

 

[greasemonkeyok]

If frac fluids were getting into the stress zones of shifting plates, wouldn't it act as a lubricant allowing the plates to move slowly, thereby preventing the sudden shift?

Quakes occur when the buildup of energy is suddenly released after overcoming the friction between the shifting plates.

By the way, as many of us move dirt, think about the amount of energy it takes to move all the dirt and rock, even small distances, associated with an earth quake. The last big one in Oklahoma was 17,000 feet below the surface.